All posts tagged thailand

The declaration last week of a coup d’etat is fueling concern that auto sales and production in the Southeast Asian nation – which calls itself the Detroit of Southeast Asia – will take another hit. The latest figures out show Thailand’s auto production in April fell by more than a quarter, while sales declined by more than a third from a year earlier.

Wednesday, Ipsos Business Consulting said it was lowering its full-year estimate for Thailand’s car production. The firm now expects Thailand’s production to drop 16% to 2.1 million cars and the country’s auto industry to shed 35,000 to 45,000 jobs in 2014. Read More »

Thailand’s slow creep toward something that may – or may not – be a move by the military to replace the country’s government, is provoking a similarly wary response from the many foreign corporations there, as they scramble to figure out what’s going on, and whether it’ll be bad or good for business.

On Tuesday morning, the Thai military declared martial law and censored some media, moves it said were aimed at halting an increasingly violent tug of war between pro-government and opposition demonstrators that’s already stretched for seven months and pummeled the economy.

Many foreign businesses said operations were largely unaffected, though experts said companies were rushing to put crisis-management teams on standby. Read More »

Farmers are reliable customers for pickup trucks, which they use to transport crops and machines. Pickup trucks are also popular with miners and construction workers. These groups are boosting sales of pickup trucks in parts of Southeast Asia at a faster rate than passenger-car sales, according to data provider LMC Automotive.

A fresh advertisement by the IKEA franchisee in Thailand, featuring a woman speaking with a deep male-like tone, has sparked fury among transsexuals, who are accusing the furniture giant of openly mocking transgender individuals for being “deceitful and deviant.”

The criticism comes only months after IKEA apologized for removing women from its Saudi catalog and expressed regret over having profited from the use of prison labourers in East Germany some 25 years ago. Those mea culpas followed the sacking of four French managers who allegedly hired private detectives to snoop on workers and disgruntled customers.

The Thai Transgender Alliance is demanding in an open letter that IKEA officially apologizes for an ad they describe as “negative and stereotypical in nature.”

The ad, shown below was broadcast on the Bangkok sky train system from Dec. 28-Jan. 13.

It shows a couple browsing an IKEA store. When the woman spots an item on sale, her voice drops into a dark male-like tone and the man next to jerks away. In the last scene, the man runs away as the woman carries off boxes of flat-packed furniture by herself.

“We want everyone to feel welcome to our stores and we apologize if it [the ad] is seen as negative,” IKEA Group spokeswoman Ylva Magnusson said.

Being the world’s biggest furniture retailer, with nearly 140,000 employees and operations in over 40 countries, is sure to come with the occasional slip-up. Still, with the rate of controversies that IKEA is currently pushing, the smoke barely has time to settle before there’s a new fire to put out.

So is all this drama hurting the IKEA brand?

“Yes and no,” according to Chief Executive Mikael Ohlsson. In an interview Monday before the Thai controversy was widely known, he said that although he would of course prefer to the get attention for all the good things IKEA does – investing billions into renewable energy and donating loads of cash every year to child charities – the increased publicity also challenges IKEA to be more open and transparent.

“What we have seen with some of those cases that have been in media is that by being very open and transparent, and just say this is what happened, it was a mistake and we’re correcting it, it also makes us stronger and I think it also builds trust,” he said.